Republican Purity: Who’s Good Enough For Them?

The Daily Escape:

Walker River, NV – February 2023 photo by TheOsideBish

According to the GOP, your organization has to toe the line or else you could be banished or investigated. CNBC is reporting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) are set to banish the US Chamber of Commerce from Capitol Hill for endorsing Democrats in some 2020 and 2022 House races.

CNBC quotes Mark Bednar, a spokesman for McCarthy:

“The priorities of the US Chamber of Commerce have not aligned with the priorities of House Republicans or the interests of their own members, and they should not expect a meeting with Speaker McCarthy as long as that’s the case…”

CNBC says Scalise also won’t meet with them either, quoting his spokeswoman Lauren Fine: (brackets by Wrongo)

“[the Chamber headquarters in] Washington has radically shifted away from the pro-business philosophy of most local Chambers across America….unless the Chamber gets back to their traditional pro-business roots, they should not expect to have any engagement with Majority Leader Scalise’s office.”

This all started in 2020, when the Chamber endorsed 23 House Democrats in swing districts, a sharp break from the past practice of endorsing a nearly exclusive slate of Republicans, with one or two Democrats thrown on the list for a patina of bipartisan perception. And Republicans failed to regain the majority. The Chamber then reportedly endorsed 23 House Republican candidates and just four Democrats during the 2022 election. But that hasn’t made them “pure” enough for Kevin McCarthy, despite the Chamber providing $3 million to Mehmet Oz in his losing effort for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

Wrongo met often with the US Chamber of Commerce during his days at the big bank. They are far from being anti-GOP. On Monday, Tim Doyle, a spokesman for the Chamber, told CNBC:

“The Chamber’s priorities include lower taxes, reduced spending, fighting over regulation and numerous other issues, and we are aligned with House Republicans on many of the issues that are important to American businesses of all sizes,”

That sounds to Wrongo like it’s aligned with the Republicans. Doyle did go on to say:

“We do disagree with those who believe the Chamber should become a single-party partisan organization….”

The Intercept is reporting that the new House Republican majority wants to investigate the Chamber over its commitment to ESG regulations. ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, key criteria that can impact company market valuations and its behavior. But ESG has become a red line for Conservatives, who argue that companies that follow it are failing to live up to their fiduciary duty to maximize profits for investors.

Apparently, Republicans in the House are also questioning the Chamber’s own conduct, including reportedly allowing former Chamber CEO Thomas Donohue to use the organization’s corporate jet for personal trips.

Look, the Chamber can be pretty terrible. They’re planning to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission if it goes forward with a climate change-related disclosure rule. But forcing them to only give money to Republicans is a new low, even for these nihilists.

Separately, Florida’s Governor DeSantis is set to take over Disney’s special Reedy Creek tax district in order to force the company to cough up $1 billion. Wrongo reported on DeSantis’ fight with Disney in April 2022 here and here. Targeting Disney became a thing after the company spoke out about Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.

Back in April, DeSantis pushed lawmakers to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which for 55 years effectively gave Disney control of the land around its Florida properties. Republicans complied, and the district was scheduled to sunset on June 1, 2023.

But on Monday, Republican lawmakers unveiled a bill to turn over control of Disney’s special taxing district to a five-member board to be chosen by DeSantis. The proposal also comes with a rebrand; Reedy Creek would become the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.”

This gives DeSantis a new form of control over Disney, the state’s largest employer. And the opportunity for extorting collecting an additional $1 billion from a company that is on the DeSantis enemies list (which will ultimately be paid by the park’s patrons) is totally on brand for DeSantis.

Anyone else getting really tired of Republicans telling us we can’t say certain words, we can’t read certain books, we can’t teach certain things, we can’t talk about certain history, or we can’t donate to a few Democrats?

What’s Conservative about any of that?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 24, 2022

A follow-up to the DeSantis vs. Disney column. Nick Papantonis of Orlando’s WFTV describes the economic consequences of Florida’s decision to take away Disney’s protected tax status.  In a Twitter thread, he says that DeSantis’ actions have given Disney a $163 million/year tax break while passing on to the two counties that hold Disney’s Reedy Creek tax jurisdiction more than $1 billion of municipal debt.

Also, once Reedy Creek goes away as a jurisdiction, Orange and Osceola counties will be responsible for providing all of the services (fire, police, roadwork) that Disney currently provides. And those counties won’t be able to pay for the additional services by raising sales taxes or impact fees.

So, they will have to raise property taxes. By law, they must tax all properties equally (not just Disney) and it’s expected that the county mil rate for property tax computation in Orange County will rise as much as 25% next June.

Florida has just 12 counties where Biden won in 2020. DeSantis has cleverly managed to screw the residents in two of them. Orange was 61-38 for Biden, Osceola was 56-43. The residents, by the way, had no say in DeSantis’ Murder Mickey vote. They will likely have no say in their property taxes going through the roof. But they are likely to see their communities come close to financial ruin.

In a way, the outcome is a perfect encapsulation of the 2022 Republican Party: Take more from Joe Sixpack while the corporations that are ostensibly the target of their moral outrage, walk away with the money. Oh, and screw a few Blue counties. On to cartoons.

Who won? You be the judge:

GOP’s rules seem wrong:

Happy passengers are missing the big picture:

MAGAs should choose their poison carefully:

Our learning disability:

 

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DeSantis vs. Disney

The Daily Escape:

Sea glass, Provincetown, MA – April 2022 photo by Nancy Kaplan

Today we continue discussing the growing Republican culture wars, this time in Florida against Disney. NBC News reported:

“The Florida Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would dissolve the special taxing district that allows the Walt Disney Co. to self-govern in its theme park area.”

Walt Disney World has effectively operated as its own municipal government in central Florida since a 1967 state law established what’s called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, an area encompassing 25,000 acres near Orlando. The law grants Disney a wide range of authority, including the power to issue bonds and provide its own utilities and emergency services, such as fire protection.

That law is in large part what convinced Disney originally to come to Florida. It has since become the state’s largest private employer with 80,000 jobs.

On Wednesday, the Florida senate passed a bill that would dissolve all independent special districts established before 1968, including Reedy Creek. Lawmakers voted 23 to 16 in favor of the bill during a special session of the state Legislature.

This is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) and the Republican-controlled  legislature‘s escalating culture war with Disney over the company’s opposition to recently passed legislation in Florida that Disney considers to be anti-gay. Disney’s leadership has criticized the legislation that prevents classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through the third grade.

Disney later said it would pause making campaign donations in Florida and also said it hoped that the law would either be repealed or struck down by the courts.

Wrongo is old enough to remember when the GOP believed that corporations had free speech and should be pretty much immune from regulation. But it now seems that corporations can be harassed or investigated unless they fall in line with the goals of the Republican culture war.

Targeting Disney only became a thing after the company spoke out about the “don’t say gay” law. Charles Cooke in the National Review notes that:

“Until about a month ago, Walt Disney World’s legal status was not even a blip on the GOP’s radar. No Republicans were calling for it to be revisited….”

Cooke says that Florida’s legislature has had five opportunities over the past 50 years to remove Disney’s sweetheart deal and didn’t. But context is everything. After the DeSantis effort to punish Disney, the legislature piled on, pretending that it’s doing so out of a concern for “good government”.

The fun part is that Disney’s status is not unique. Florida has 1,844 special districts, of which 1,288, like Walt Disney World, are “independent.” Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark offers up examples of a few more of these districts:

  • The Villages (where Governor DeSantis announced his review of Disney’s status)
  • Orlando International Airport
  • The Daytona International Speedway

Wrongo isn’t defending Disney’s right to special treatment, despite he and Ms. Right having a granddaughter who works for Disney in CA.

Wrongo would be fine if Florida took away all special breaks from these large corporations.

The Disney special district is really a form of corporate welfare. And no Republican with serious national ambitions wants to be against corporate welfare. So instead, DeSantis tries punishing Disney as part of his red-hot culture war. If this move was really about good public policy, then Republicans would have done it through their regular legislative process. But that clearly wasn’t their intent.

Overlooked in the anti-Disney hype, was that this bill was attached to other legislation approved by the Florida senate, a Congressional redistricting map that eliminates two predominantly Black Congressional districts and tilts the balance of the Florida delegation even more to the Republicans. Democrats were especially critical of an amendment added Tuesday that requires all lawsuits challenging the redistricting map to be filed in Leon Circuit Court. This is an attempt to sidestep the federal court in Tallahassee where in the past, most election law cases have been challenged and found to be unconstitutional.

The new map is expected to boost Republicans’ current 16-11 Congressional advantage to 20–8. Republicans would likely own roughly 71% of the state’s Congressional seats in a state where Trump won with 51.2% of the vote in 2020. Florida also gained a seat during the most recent census.

The Party claiming to be against “Big Government” is using the government to punish a private company for permissible business decisions. As Heather Cox Richardson says:

“The Walt Disney Company delivers to the state more than $409 million in sales taxes for tickets alone, employs more than 80,000 Florida residents, and supports more than 400,000 more jobs. Today, the Miami Herald reported that repealing the company’s governing authority would raise taxes on families in the area by $2,200 each.”

Anyone else getting really tired of Republicans telling us we can’t say certain words, we can’t read certain books, we can’t teach certain things, or that we can’t talk about certain history? And why are they taking away our freedom to vote?

What’s Conservative about any of that?

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Monday Wake Up Call – June 15, 2015

You may vaguely remember that President Obama went to the Tomb of the Unknowns’ on Memorial Day. You probably don’t remember that he said:

Today is the first Memorial Day in 14 years that the United States is not engaged in a major ground war.

Yet, just two weeks later, he sent more “advisers” to Iraq. This will bring the number of US locations in Iraq to five. Mr. Obama and his own advisers continue to believe that the US should defeat or degrade ISIS in Iraq without significant help of Iran and the Shi’ite militias.

Most of Washington’s foreign policy establishment is pushing Obama to “win” in Iraq. To do that, he must exercise at least as much influence with Baghdad as Iran. He must keep a US-friendly leadership in power, and keep the Iraqi military engaging ISIS outside of Baghdad.

Obama’s decision to locate a new base in Anbar province between Ramadi and Fallujah conforms to the FP establishment’s program. The new location only makes sense if American troops are there for some kind of combat role. If they were only going to Iraq to train Sunnis, (the stated role), it could be located anywhere in the country. But, as the Wrongologist has reported, the new advisers will be stationed at Taqqadum, an Iraqi base near the city of Habbaniya, where they will act as a trip-wire for ISIS advances.

Add to this what General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week about creating a string of “lily pads”, American military bases around Iraq:

You could see [them] in the corridor from Baghdad to Tikrit to Kirkuk to Mosul.

General Dempsey acknowledged that such sites would require many more troops than those already authorized by Mr. Obama. Unfortunately, it didn’t work against the Taliban in Afghanistan, so a good question is why it will work in Iraq. The “lily pad” idea will increase the already high likelihood that the American forces will soon be shooting, and being shot at. This means Gen. Dempsey is suggesting an open-ended American presence in Iraq engaging an open-ended insurgency by ISIS. Any decision to plant additional lily pads will certainly require more US troops in Iraq.

Wake up America, these DC Hawks will never end the war in the Middle East. To bring you gently into consciousness, here is another spring visitor to the fields of Wrong, the Magnolia Warbler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dm5InFg1g

If you read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:
Homosexual mounting is a common behavior in bed bugs as male sexual interest is directed towards any newly fed individual. Mounted males discharge alarm pheromones, while mounting males consider the alarm signal a major sex identification cue, suggesting that male bed bugs use alarm pheromone communication to avoid homosexual harassment and mounting. Who funds this crap??

Disney World upped their prices to get in to $125. But it’s the cross-selling that takes the Disney experience to a new price level. Their Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutiques sell a $195 pampering for little girls that includes a makeover, hair-styling, a costume and a princess sash. Sounds like some Wall Street Dad’s idea. Not judging, people can spend their $$ however they want.

Costco has surpassed Whole Foods to become the biggest organic grocer, selling more than $4 billion last year. That means more than 1 out of every 10 dollars in organic food sales are made at a Costco since trade association estimates of the total market are ~$36 billion. But you have to buy a bushel of organic mangoes when you want just one.

The number of people killed by police in the United States during 2015 reached 500 last week, according to The Guardian. The updated findings means that the total is on track to exceed 1,000 by the end of 2015 – and that people are being killed by officers at more than twice the rate most recently detected by the much-criticized FBI system, which recorded 461 killed in 2013.

The Onion said the US has run out of options and that continued intervention will only prolong the US’s suffering. Experts say the best course of action is to keep the US as comfortable as possible until the end. Here is a quote:

We need to accept the fact that the US doesn’t have long—simply helping it pass that time in comfort is the humane thing to do…letting it meet its end naturally is the merciful decision here.

Totally agree. Put us out of our misery. Please.

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